‘The San Antonio River Doesn’t Start in San Antonio, It Now Starts in Burleson County’: Stakeholder Perspectives on a Groundwater Transfer Project in Central Texas
Academic Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
View All
Overview
abstract
© 2019, © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Water insecurity concerns drove San Antonio, Texas to pursue a controversial $3.4 billion groundwater transfer project from central Texas aquifers. The 228 km Vista Ridge Pipeline (VRP) would increase water supplies by 20%. Analysis through Q-Method revealed three social perspectives surrounding the VRP. Project Advocates offer particular views of urban water security, risk, and accountability. The creation of new hydro-social territories helps to explain Landowner Opposition, while Governance Failure offers a foundational criticism of the underlying assumptions and the institutional innovation of private-public partnership that advanced the VRP. Overall, our paper demonstrates that the VRP is differentiated according to views of risk, water law, and groundwater science. Policy deliberations on future urban water security should include these perspectives as a means to improve water governance, especially as policies and infrastructure for urban water security creates new hydro-social territories.
altmetric score
author list (cited authors)
Beckner, S., Jepson, W., Brannstrom, C., & Tracy, J.
citation count
publication date
publisher
published in
Research
keywords
Groundwater
Q-method
Stakeholder Perspectives
Texas
Urban Water Security
Water Governance
Identity
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Additional Document Info
start page
end page
volume
issue